stow them in the forward compartments. Meanwhile, he threaded a path through the chaos of activity on the bridge until he reached the hatch leading down from the crew quarters to main engine room. Chief Portlost was in a tizzy, dashing in three directions at once and shouting orders at anyone who stopped to listen.
“Conundrum!” he shouted when he saw the red-bearded oilage officer pressing through crew quarters, climbing over those busily stowing personal items and loose cargo beneath every available tube and pipe. “Conundrum, get over here! The main drive spring is in sorry shape!”
“I just oiled it this morning!” Conundrum answered.
“Well, it needs more oil, boy. Every gear and spring must be oiled. Never forget that.”
“I know,” Conundrum shouted from the center of the crew quarters, where a large half-tube rose up from the floor and passed through the bulkhead above. “But first I have to grease the mast-lowering apparatus. We’re about to dive!” He dipped a large, hairy brush into a bucket and slopped black grease onto his shoes. He then began to paint the interior of the half-tube.
“I already knew that, didn’t I?” the chief oilage officer shouted in reply as he adjusted a bank of large, important-looking levers, pulling some down, and pushing others up. A gnome rushed into the engine room with an armload of torches. He replaced the old ones with fresh new torches burning with bright merry flames, then rushed to the next room to do the same.
“But what are we diving for?” the red-bearded chief shouted as he wound a few extra turns into the main drive spring and checked the torque meters for the diving and ascending flowpellars. “That’s what I want to know. And without a bit of warning!”
“Minotaur pirates!” Conundrum shouted. Suddenly, the thick round wooden mast descended from above, nearly catching the bristles of his brush between it and the bracing-guidetube that he was greasing.
“Minotaur pirates?” the chief cried, pausing in his frantic labors for a moment. “Save us!”
Snork’s voice floated down from the bridge above. “Stand by to flood the forward ballast tank and engage the descending flowpellar!”
Conundrum dropped his brush and bucket of grease, and, snatching up a small glass bottle with a long skinny neck that was filled with olive oil, he rushed forward to where a tangled nest of tubes and pipes protruded from the bulkhead. From the shadowy midst of the pipes peered the beady red eyes of a rat. “Out of the way, Onslow!” Conundrum shouted. “There’s work to do!” The rat he had nicknamed thusly scurried out and vanished beneath a sack of buckwheat flour.
“Standing by to flood the forward ballast tank!” Conundrum shouted at almost the same time that Chief Portlost bellowed, “Standing by to engage the descending flowpellar!”
A loud clang sounded from above, followed by a metallic grinding noise. “Secure all hatches!” Commodore Brigg ordered.
“All hatches secured.”
“Prepare to dive.”
Four gnomes descended the ladder from the bridge, landing with four thumps on the deck of the crew quarters one right after another. Two hurried forward, one each to man the spring crank of the descending and ascending flowpellars, and the other two to man the crank of the main spring engine. If these were engaged, Conundrum would have to rush about keeping them oiled, but for the moment his main duty lay with the forward ballast tank valve, making sure it didn’t stick closed, or even worse, open.
Snork’s voice floated down from above, “Flood the forward ballast tank!”
In the engine room, Chief Portlost shouted, “Flooding the forward ballast tank, aye!” He dropped a large, heavy switch, and Conundrum heard water gurgling behind the bulkhead beside which he crouched. Satisfied that the valve was working properly, he ran aft, his bottle of oil sloshing in his fist. He ducked into the engine room, avoiding the two burly gnomes, stripped to the waist and already sweating profusely as they madly cranked the main drive spring. Conundrum took his place beside the aft ballast tank valve. He set the bottle of oil on the ground and noticed that its contents were not level. Instead, they tilted toward the front of the ship. The watertight door leading into the engine room slammed shut. Chief Portlost hurried to open and secure it.
“Flood the aft ballast tank,” Snork shouted from the bridge, “and engage the descending flowpellar!”
“Flooding the aft ballast tank, aye!” Chief Portlost responded, dropping another large, heavy switch into place. “Cross your fingers, lads,” he muttered under his breath.
Presently, they heard the sound of gurgling water, but more important was what they didn’t see-water spewing in around the bulkheads.
Conundrum watched the oil in his bottle slowly level out. Chief Portlost sighed.
“Engaging the descending flowpellar, aye!” Portlost shouted triumphantly.
A cheer went up from the bridge-it had been during this phase of the dive that the
As they sank, they noticed how the air began to change. Sound was dampened, yet at the same time they became acutely aware of new and unusual sounds. There was no longer the gentle slap and slosh of the sea against the hull, a noise they had become so used to hearing that they only noticed it now by its absence. The air became close, compressed, and more difficult to see through because of a growing haze. On the bridge, people began to cough, softly at first, then more harshly. The hull commenced to pop and creak most alarmingly, as if there were a company of dwarves outside beating it with hammers and prying at the seams with crowbars.
The gnomes found that they could hear things outside the ship quite well. They heard all sorts of clicks, whirs, clutters, squeaks, pops, whoops, and warbles, as though they were in some kind of jungle aviary and not beneath the bright briny sea. They also heard the dip and splash of the oars of the approaching minotaur galley. Almost it seemed already on top of them, but after a time, they realized that this was but a trick of hearing.
When they had descended a sufficient distance below the surface, Commodore Brigg ordered, between coughs and gasps for air, the flowpellars disengaged. The ship gradually slowed, but it never really seemed to stop. Even when lying motionless in the water, it seemed to those aboard that it was still sinking slowly. This was not the case, Commodore Brigg assured the crew that had begun to gather near the bridge. It was but a trick of the mind, like the sensation of flying one feels for days after being flung by a gnomeflinger for the first time. Everyone on the upper deck was coughing most uproariously now, as though the whole ship were trying desperately to get someone’s attention, with Conundrum and the chief alone as yet unafflicted by this strange new malady. Finally Chief Portlost noticed this oddity and raised his bushy eyebrows in consternation, pondering aloud, “Undersea sickness?”
And so, in a silence broken by waves of hacking and wheezing, they waited and listened to the approaching pirate ship. It seemed to take much longer than any of them could have imagined. In fact, it took so long that many of the crew began to drop down the ladder by ones and twos, then in mass, even the officers from the bridge, all hacking out their lungs.
“The ship is filling up with smoke,” Snork gasped as Conundrum helped him to a hammock.
“Is it a fire?” Chief Portlost cried.
“No,” Sir Grumdish wheezed. “It’s the torches. They’re smoldering.
“It’s like a cave-in in a tunnel,” Conundrum cursed. “We’re sealed inside the ship, and we’re using up all the air! The torches need plenty of air to breath and burn properly. All they do is smoke.”
“What we need is a vent, a tube to the surface, to let the smoke out,” Snork said. “Something that we can extend and retract…” He slapped weakly at his pockets, feeling for a pencil. “I’d draw up the design if I could only see!” he exclaimed. “My eyes are on fire.”
“And I can barely breathe,” someone else said.
“Well, we’re safe here for a while, at least,” the commodore said. “Extinguish all the torches on this level.”
Commodore Brigg had recovered sufficiently to begin nervously pacing the crew quarters with his hands folded behind his back. Snork lay in his hammock while Conundrum held a cool cloth to his cousin’s eyes. Doctor Bothy sat in a small chair with his flab hanging over the sides, looking rather uncomfortable and put-out, like a child made to sit in a corner. Occasionally, a cough shook his bulk like a tub of jelly. Sir Grumdish lay half-dead of asphyxiation atop a pile of grain bags. The professor leaned against the forward bulkhead, eyeing Razmous the
